Our Cars: Charlotte Cobbs
16 January 2012: That was different
We started off going through all the usual towns, where I was faced with the regular situations - parked cars, buses and pedestrians. I thought I’d have to deal with a cyclist as I pulled out of a T-junction, behind one. But, he very kindly turned left almost immediately afterwards.
As we continued, we approached two consecutive mini roundabouts, which I had to go straight on at. I cleared the first one fine. But the second one was over to the right so to go straight on, you have to get over to the left as soon as possible. I knew this because I’d done it many times before. So, I was kicking myself that I didn’t get far enough over to the left on the approach.
Anyway, I got through it and the usual haunts took us onto a small dual-carriageway, which led to the A27 roundabout. Taking the first exit, left, we were on a 40mph road and then another dual-carriageway. As I found out recently, I’ve slightly lost confidence when driving at speed so I wobbled around a bit. To make things a little more difficult, coming off this particular dual-carriageway is quite tricky in itself.
It’s not as simple as seeing your junction, looking in your mirror, signaling and coming off. Yes, you do have to do all that, of course, but you can’t do it in that order as you can’t see the junction. You have to do your observations and signal, before you go down quite a steep hill to find your junction at the bottom of it. Nevertheless, I knew this from my surroundings and did it all correctly because I’d done that particular junction before.
With that out of the way, I was able to get back into my comfort zone and calm things down a bit - even if I did have to deal with parked cars on both sides of narrow, steep roads. We drove slowly through two more villages, with no problems. Whatever situation did arise, like two pedestrians walking out in front of me near the beginning of the lesson, I dealt with it calmly and effectively. In fact, the roads were quiet for the whole of my lesson, which was lovely. I haven’t had a lesson like that for ages.
I drove home with the same calmness that had threaded through the lesson, not only in regards in the roads, but also to how I was feeling. Don’t get me wrong, tension was still weighing my shoulders down as it always does, but it only seemed to affect me on the dual carriageways.
My feeling that the lesson had gone well was right too as there were only three bullet points on the dreaded notebook - not a whole page like it sometimes is. Obviously, I needed to get my position right on that annoying second mini roundabout. I need to watch my speed on approaches to roundabouts on dual carriageways and, most importantly, more practice driving on dual carriageways so I don’t drift around.
But, what was so different about this lesson, I hear you say? I went through the usual roads I go on every lesson and I knew the others relatively well. Well, Vaughan wasn’t sitting beside me and it wasn’t Vaughan’s car I was driving. And no, I hadn’t passed my test, so I wasn’t driving alone.
Believe me, I’d tell you if I had been! The difference between this lesson and others was the person sitting beside me in her red Alfa Romeo Mito - a colleague of Vaughan’s, Samantha Clark. I haven’t come this far with Vaughan to then decide to change instructors, don’t worry. Samantha was only taking this lesson because Vaughan wanted me to experience driving with someone else beside me as it would be on my test.
So, bearing in mind, I had a different instructor in the passenger seat of an unfamiliar car; I was very pleased with three bullet points. It had been a good lesson today.
« Earlier: A bad feeling about this... Later: Independent driving »
